Bob Beckel, my favorite punching bag

Old Bob was sounding off on Fox New's "Five" last night, displaying his deep ignorance. Bob was defending Obama's claim that government support was behind every successful enterpreneur.  So he says "Bill Gates claimed the space program made the first micro computer possible." 
  Not true Bob.  What made the microcomputer, the Altairs, the Ithaca Intersysterms, the Cromemcos, the Commodore PETs, the Apple IIs and the Radio Shack TRS-80s possible was the microprocessor, a single 40 pin dual inline package  that does the thinking that makes a computer compute. 
   The first micro processor was designed by Intel, for a Japanese customer making desktop calculating machines.  The Japanese company, BubCom, wanted to make an exceptionally powerful product that could do square roots.  The Intel designers were inspired by the PDP-8, the first minicomputer, which had an elegantly simple design and astonishing power.  Intel designed a CPU chip for BubCom which became the Intel 4004.  To make the CPU become a desktop calculator Intel wrote a program, stored in a ROM chip to make the CPU recognize the keys in the keyboard, do the arithmetic and drive the display. The 4004 was nearly as powerful as the much bigger contemporary PDP-8 minicomputer.
   The PDP-8 motherboard, designed before microprocessors existed, used ordinary TTL logic gates to do it's thinking.  That mother board was some 17 inches square, contained some 200 odd chips.  The entire PDP-8 machine cost $7000 in 1969, weighed 50 pounds, and mounted in a 19 inch relay rack.  Took up a foot of rack space.  The Intel 4004 chip was nearly as powerful, cost $20 (then)  and didn't weigh an ounce.  This microprocessor chip made the microcomputers possible. 
   No government funds, projects, spinoffs, regulators, tax men involved.  It was a straight commercial deal brought to us by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, no government involvement what so ever.

Beat the heat

The morning radio was predicting 100 degree temps in southern NH and 90 degrees up here.  Well, we dodged that bullet.  The good ole Cannon Cloud was right out there bring us a gentle cooling rain.  Temp was 71 all morning.  Good old Ken King's crew kept right on mowing the grass in the rain.  Sun finally burned off  the cloud and it's up to 80, but that beats 90 any day. Plus we have some breeze.

Berets

Been following, and chuckling about the US Olympic team uniform fracas.  Chuckie the Schumer is outraged that the uniforms are made in China.
  As for me, I just don't like the style.  Americans walking in the opening parade ought to be wearing something really American, like cowboy hats and blue jeans.  Every other country sends their athletics out wearing native dress, why not us too?
  AND,  berets are not American.  They are French.  Or Special Forces.   Sending our athletes out in berets is too close to sending them out wearing Army helmets.  Wrong image. 

Silence gives assent

If you don't reply to an attack, but remain silent, the voters begin to think it's true.  Obama is attacking Romney's record at Bain capital, accusing him of being an asset stripping corporate raider.  Romney ain't replying.  Romney ought to be saying "We put money into these winning companies, and today they employ umpteen zillion people".  I haven't heard him say that yet. 
  Us voters just watch TV.  If Obama's accusations are false, we expect Romney to tell us so.  If he remains silent, when he ought to defend himself, we begin to think  there might be something in the accusations.
  Dukakis demonstrated this to perfection many years ago.  The Bush campaign ran a series of TV attack ads accusing Dukakis of endangering public safety by releasing dangerous murderer and sex offender ,Willie Horton, on parole.  Dukakis never replied and the mud stuck to him. 

Amtrak: $151 billion for NE Corridor

Hmm . $151 billion to create a High Speed Rail line running Boston to Washington.  Nice, but $151 billion is a lot of money.  Actually, when my family travels Boston to New York, they take the Fung Wah bus, $15 one way, four hours.  Amtrak's Acela is closer to $100, and takes nearly as long.  I've taken Acela, it's cool, but only when traveling on a company expense account.  It's too pricey for what it offers for me to ride it on my own time and my own money.  Go Fung Wah bus. 
   When we talk about the full Boston- Washington run, Southwest Airlines is only $75 one way, and flight time is only one hour. 
   And, if I need a car while in New York or DC,  I drive.  Four hours to NYC (fast as Acela) and 7 hours to DC, (again, fast as Acela). 
    I'm a long time train buff, I love train travel, but is this a wise use of $151 billion?

Bye-Bye WMUR (Channel 9)

Time Warner cable dropped WMUR, the voice of New Hampshire.  It's just another ABC channel, but it's been transmitting from Manchester since the 1950's  and always had good local (NH) news and stuff.  Apparently the blackout comes from a price squabble between Time Warner and ABC.   I'm north of Franconia Notch which means no way will an antenna bring in channel 9 , too much granite mountain between me and the transmitter.

Das Boote

Untersee Boote (U-boat) that is.  Watched it the other night.  Opened the DVD box.  Found TWO discs inside.  Labeled Disc 1 and Disc 2.  So we loaded Disc 1 and watched.  It went on and on and very little happened.  We saw how miserable conditions aboard were, wet and drippy, crowded, raging seas breaking over the conning tower, air attacks and a depth charging. They did a lot of griping.   Never got to see them launch torpedoes at anything.  They were still at sea when it became time to load Disc 2.  We decided that it was so sluggish that we didn't bother. 
  Would have been a much better movie with some rigorous editing.